Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book!

I really liked two poems in this book; “Nietzsche Said” and “By Nightfall”

I do feel like it got a bit basic towards the end and the story was strange and unnecessary.

2.5 stars

"[...] trying is the only way for us to survive on this beautiful catastrophic stage/Of the divine comedy/We call living."
"The Smallest God Who Ever Lived" is a volume of incredibly powerful, moving verse. Thanh Dinh speaks of love as pain, love as sadness, and love as the greatest blessing while acknowledging love's flaws and the freedom of loss. Dinh reminds us: "We fall through the cracks of Heaven,/Not to reach Hell,/But to reach the Present [...]" To be alive is to struggle, to seek and not always find. It is asking the same questions over and over, and receiving a different answer each time, but still having the courage to walk into each new day.
This is truly a beautiful book, not for the faint of heart, but for people who have struggled with their own demons, people who are afraid, but keep going, because we understand how much effort it takes to live in this world.

I feel like I haven't read anything like this before. The entries are short, the language is gorgeous and the emotions are powerful. It did feel dark, but also realistic.

The Smallest God Who Ever Lived is a breathtaking, genre-blurring debut that manages to be both mythic and deeply personal, expansive in its imagination yet intimate in emotional scope. Thanh Dinh writes with the sensitivity of a poet and the boldness of a visionary, weaving a narrative that explores identity, trauma, memory, and divinity through a lens that feels wholly original. At the heart of the novel is a voice that pulses with longing—for understanding, for healing, for connection—and every page thrums with that yearning. Dinh blurs the line between the sacred and the everyday, between human fragility and cosmic power, with a kind of gentle ferocity that left me stunned. The prose is lyrical without ever becoming inaccessible—each sentence crafted with care, every image vivid and resonant. This story invites you to slow down and feel, to sit with discomfort, beauty, and transformation. It’s not just a narrative; it’s an experience, layered with symbolism and emotional truth. Dinh’s exploration of cultural displacement, queer identity, and spiritual inheritance is tender and fierce, creating a story that feels both ancient and urgent. Rarely does a novel feel so timeless and yet so necessary in this moment. The Smallest God Who Ever Lived is a meditation, a prayer, and a revelation all at once—and I have no doubt it will stay with me for a very long time.

"If we had the chance to live, the sonabitch would have been alive."

This collection doesn't offer a lot of hope, which left me thinking a lot about why that bothers me. It's not the author's responsibility to offer a silver lining, I suppose, but I think it's also clear that's what I prefer at this point in my life. In this collection's commitment to its nihilism, it explores themes of religion, relationships, and continuing to try. When it was a hit, it hit hard for me. Without exception, I found the paragraph-style poetry the most powerful, and "The Death in the Garbage Truck — Interlude" and "The Promise — Prelude" are definitely the poems that will stay with me. Overall, unfortunately, this collection had more misses than hits for me, but it's something I know that I would have loved in my early twenties before I started really figuring things out.

I did find the punctuation quite distracting throughout the reading experience, especially looking at the choices of em dashes and commas where they didn't, to me, make sense with the pacing and stories. On the flip side, I thought this author did an absolutely killer job with endings. Each poem felt like it had a satisfying conclusion, some of which made me read the poems back a few times to really appreciate the journey to get there.

For these reasons, I have not included a star rating on my Goodreads page, as I don't think it's fair. The collection varies greatly for me from poem to poem and with stylistic choices, and I feel like this would be a fantastic read for a particular audience. Here, I've given it its necessary star rating based on the overall vibe and how much it made me think; though the poems themselves often fell flat for me, I'm still left with questions about my relationships to poetry, my past, and my slippery grasp on hope. That's worth four stars, in my opinion.

If you're feeling lost and pointless and looking for a poetry collection that makes you feel seen, I'd recommend this one. I'd recommend it even more if you're looking back from a secure place in your own future at a past where nothing ever seemed it would get better.

With love and thanks to Writerly Publishing for the ARC!

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

The Smallest God Who Ever Lived is a collection of raw and honest poetry from Thanh Dinh that rips open the raw and real emotions experienced and felt by the author. Many of these poems were relatable to challenging times, gotten through alone by myself too, and these hit hard. I found myself taking my time with this book and rereading poems several times before moving on to the next.

From the very first poem in this collection, the reader is dropped into deeply felt emotion, as though into freezing cold water. Thanh Dinh tackles themes of grief, loneliness, war, and toxic relationships, while painting an intimate portrait of how she coexists with deep and sometimes unrelenting depression, as though it is a roommate or family member. If you've ever wondered whether depression is the only logical response to modern society, you will find some common ground here.

I relished the raw vulnerability of this work, whether Dinh was describing very serious topics, such as her urges to self-harm, or more obscure ones, such as her sleepless thoughts about the first dog in space (I, too, have lain awake crying about Laika the space dog).

The text sometimes meanders through different points of view, switching from the first person into the second or third person in ways that make the poems feel surreal.

In many poems, the author mentions or explores her atheism, so this book might not resonate with you if you are religious. You should also leave this on the shelf if you are seeking structured poetic forms and meters; this is free verse, with only occasional assonance or rhyme. And of course, you should trust the recommendation in poem 24, "It Gets Darker":

"If you want something light,
You shouldn't pick up this book."

Finally, I'll point out that what was presented as the final chapter in the manuscript, and referred to by some other reviewers as a short story, was actually a preview chapter from an upcoming novel - not part of this collection. You might or might not find it in upcoming editions.

Thank you to the author and Writerly Books for providing an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

I can admit when I am not smart enough to fully understand a book. Nevertheless, I do know this book was immensely personal, raw, and vulnerable. You can tell how much thought and emotion went into creating in this book. I especially enjoyed 'What You Call Freedom".

I want to thank Thanh Dinh and Writerly Books for the e-copy of The Smallest God Who Ever Lived in exchange for my honest review.

A great collection of poetry. Thanh Dinh has some wonderful turns of phrase. My favorites were By Nightfall and Bones.

This could use another editing pass (there are a number of typos). The chapter at the end was confusing as it was numbered just like all the poems and had no introduction as something separate.

4.5/5

Thanh Dinh’s poetry in The Smallest God Who Ever Lived is honest, emotional, and deeply personal. Three poems stood out to me: I Hold Death in My Arms Like an Old Lover, Reading Virginia Woolf, and Living is About Killing Everything.

Each of them explores heavy themes—death, survival, loneliness, healing—with rawness and care.

In I Hold Death in My Arms Like an Old Lover, death is almost human: someone you speak to, someone you once loved. It’s sad but strangely gentle. It makes you think about all the people we forget, and all the pain that doesn’t make it into history books.

Reading Virginia Woolf is a tribute to how words can save us. It reminded me how reading can make you feel less alone, how it can bring you back to yourself when you feel lost. It’s about finding the will to keep going, even in the middle of quiet sadness.

And Living is About Killing Everything is brutally honest. It talks about how living isn’t always beautiful—it’s hard, tiring, and full of quiet battles inside your own mind. But there’s also a strange hope in it. The poem made me feel seen.

Thanh Dinh’s writing is not about pretending things are okay. It’s about saying the hard things out loud—and somehow, in doing that, making them a little more bearable. This book made me feel, think, and sit quietly with my own emotions. I’m grateful I read it.

I rarely read collections of poems, but something about this one was different, and it resonated with me immediately. Every author's creation in the book is beautifully written and deeply poetic. The themes of mental health, dying, heartbreak, life, and oppression, as well as the author's choice of words, were relatable and cutting from the inside. I wonder how hard it was for the author to release the collection, as it feels very personal. But I am thankful for that. I will just sit here and wait for the author's debut novel.

2.5 stars
I wasn't expecting this to be religious in any capacity, but that's my fault considering the word god is literally in the title...
But other than that putting me off a bit, most of the stories were pretty good! I wish I liked it more tho. I did really love the writing, so that's good I guess.

Sorry if this review is a bit of a mess, my chronic pain is particularly bad today so I can't really concentrate well... So sorry about that!

Thanh Dinh's "The Smallest God Who Ever Lived" is a beautiful work of art. I'm a huge fan of poetry and prose and her musings cover everything from reminisces on recovery through overheard conversations on Death.

Thanh Dinh's words spoke to me so strongly as she tackled a search for love and hope. She speaks with the strength of a soft heart, steeped in experience, and survival.

A beautiful work, and well-worth the read. Thanh's work reads like a late-night conversation with a friend--poignant and authentic.

This collection of poetry is full of emotions. It's sometimes sad, mysterious and intimate, all of which touch your heart. It will resonate with you if you are grieving about loss, breakup or someone's death or when you feel trapped in the human world. Very beautifu.

This collection of poems was amazing! Emotional and lyrical, the writing style was beautiful and capturing, I couldn’t stop reading. There was a perfect mixture of sad and hopeful poems which I’ll surely come back to in the future. The title first caught my attention and I was captured right from the first poem.

The Smallest God Who Ever Lived by Thanh Dinh is a deep, complex, thought provoking book. It really changes my perspective on a few things. This collection of poems provokes deep feelings and longing for our narrator. The lyrical storytelling in this was absolutely beautiful. I don’t read a lot of poetry but this collection was so beautiful and I’m so grateful to have gotten the opportunity to read this. I never felt lost while reading the book, and I could really visualize the story just like any other fiction book, so if you are a beginner in reading poetry, this book would be enjoyable for you! Thank You Thanh Dinh, Writerly Book, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately, I found a lot of the poems in this anthology as repetitive. There were also several instances of spelling, grammar, and tense errors. Overall, the poet seemed to ramble a lot and I struggled to keep going.